


Table Manners

by VastDerp



Series: Kagerou [1]
Category: kagerou
Genre: Awkwardness, Genderfuck, Other, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/pseuds/VastDerp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A few months ago I was prompted to write shippy fanfic for my own comic. This awkward little character piece was the result.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Table Manners

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago I was prompted to write shippy fanfic for my own comic. This awkward little character piece was the result.

__  
**1\. Table manners**   


 

The waitress is staring. Heyoka notices before she's even all that obvious about it, but Kano is busy emoting at the menu on the table and never catches it at all. Somehow the selection has managed to annoy him, and he is making a cleaning the litter box sort of face.

Heyoka wanted to savor this moment a little longer. She--this is very definitely a girl kind of day--sort of enjoys seeing her weird new roommate make this genuinely stupid face at a description of spaghetti a la hipster. But then the waitress showed up a second ago, and she still hasn't said anything, which brings us to the very irritating now. The waitress (Stephanie, her nametag says she's a Stephanie), standing by their table with her notepad folded into her vest pocket, gawking at Kano. And Heyoka as the audience, doing what she does best: taking it all in. Savoring verbs before their corner cafe main course of pasta and derision. All they need, she thought when they entered the place, is an open mic night to make this whole experience perfect. And the worst thing is, there is a stage to their far left. Under the trying-too-hard-to-be-ironic Elvis decor and the don't-even-fucking-bother plastic alligator. Oh god. _Abandon all rhyme schemes, ye who snap fingers here._

Fucking gawking waitress. Like, mouth slightly open and everything. It is an even stupider expression than Heyoka's dinner date has managed to make at the blasphemous menu, but somehow Heyoka does not enjoy _this_ face at all. It has Ruined The Moment.

"Can I take your order?" Heyoka chirps, making that special eye contact that says _bitch don't even,_ and the waitress actually blinks in confusion for a second. "Uh." Her pretty green eyes widen and she flails for her order pad. "Uh, right, what can I start you off with to drink?" And bang, she's a waitress again and probably a decent human being. And Kano is still hating on his menu and hasn't noticed any of this, because that's his special mutant ability.

Stephanie takes the order and scampers off with one mercifully brief glance over her shoulder and Heyoka is waiting for it with her laser eyes. Zap.

 

**2\. The pirate method of sandwich selection**   


 

"This menu," Kano tells the table, "Is an affront to my dignity. Everything has cheese. Everything else has even more cheese. Can we go somewhere else."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch." Heyoka stabs at random. Whatever her finger hits, that's dinner. She has always wanted to be a pirate, but this city is landlocked and she hasn't got an eyepatch, so she takes her adventure where she can get it. "Every place has chicken fingers. Get the chicken fingers."

Someone is tuning up an acoustic guitar on the little stage. The sound system is still off but things are looking dire.

She peeks at her finger on the menu. Tonight's adventure, it tells her, is Philly cheesesteak. But no one is standing over her shoulder and pirates don't give a shit about the rules anyway, so she stabs the menu again, a little closer to the burger side of the selections, and lands on a perfectly acceptable chicken sandwich with avocado something something. _Now we're talking._

"I saw that." Kano informs his menu. "You cheated."

"Suck it, landlubber. Cheesesteak is fucked."

"And I'm the picky eater."

"Yes. Yes you are, forever." Heyoka closes the menu and glares at her glorified housepet. "And while we're on the topic of dignity..."

"Don't start. Don't even say it. They're _your_ underpants."

"Like I ever wore them? Gross. They're yours and I hope you're very happy together."

"Why did you even have them. Who keeps Hello Kitty underwear for guests. That's like some kind of fetish or something."

"Pick your poison, goofball. The waitress approaches." Heyoka does not want to explain the bouts of madness that sometimes overcome her at the sight of discount cartoon underwear. Not even the biofems she has dated have ever understood. Sometimes it's a dealbreaker. She's glad that, just this once, she is the less strange half of the conversation. She will not ruin it with the underpants exposition. Not this time.

The acoustic guy on the little stage is noodling into the microphone. Okay, well that's not so bad then. For a joint that can't decide whether it's Applebee's or a scene hangout. She could just about stand this.

"Done," Kano says. He slides his own menu over to the edge of the table but doesn't stop glaring down where it was. Heyoka would take this kind of shit as a cold shoulder from anyone else, but she has, in the space of their brief and bizarre acquaintance, not once seen him look anyone in the eyes when talking. It is sort of a hobby of hers, right now, trying to see if she can catch him glancing up at her. But so far he's just too quick.

Dude doesn't know how to socialize and he looks like a domestic violence PSA, but he has ninja glances like she's never imagined. He doesn't appear to be self-conscious about his black and blue face so much as being here at all, but Heyoka's okay with that. Comfort zones are boring and he's got to leave the apartment once a week or she will go insane and kill them both.

This is, actually,  pretty much the exact wording of the ultimatum she gave him earlier this evening.

He had moped around for a few hours  after the discussion, then invited her out for "spaghetti or whatever" with a bluntness that had to be pure embarrassment. This is also his tone of voice when apologizing for basically living on her couch. And for last night. And for breaking the stupid glasses last week. He does a lot of apologizing, which is kind of cute, but this dinner thing is new and awkward as hell.

Stephanie sets down their drinks, Heyoka orders the pirate chicken sandwich, and Kano tells the table that he would like chicken fingers. With no cheese.

"They don't come with cheese." Stephanie is writing the orders on the pad, and seems to be taking pains not to so much as look at Kano while Heyoka is watching. "They're chicken fingers."

"One can never be too careful in this uncertain day and age," Heyoka's red-haired dinner date proclaims to the salt shaker, and his voice is uncharacteristically ominous. And Stephanie rolls her eyes. Heyoka watches all this without comment, but she likes this Stephanie a little more now. Rolling your eyes is something honest people do.

"That it?" she asks. But really she is saying "I get to go home in an hour, please don't fuck this up for me."

"Yup," Heyoka says, and the waitress scampers.  
   

__  
**3\. Intercourse with a side of phallic imagery**   


 

An endless ten minutes pass, filled with acoustic guitar. Still no vocals, maybe because the place is so empty. Maybe all the scenesters are down the street being seen somewhere cooler.

Now it's time to play conversational chicken, one of her new favorite games. It shouldn't be entertaining. It should be boring. But it is, and it's not.

"I like your apartment," Kano says.

_Yesssss._

"You have nice...." He runs out of talk. She tears the end off her straw packet and pushes the paper into a crinkled lump at the end, taking extra care to accordion it just so. "Nice...?" she prompts.

He waves both hands around, miming his loss for words, until she raises an eyebrow. This is something she does often. If you've got it, flaunt it. The paper straw wrapper falls to the table and she drops water on it to make it it squirm around.

"That is pornographic," he says. She gives him a lewd grin and for just a second there's a glance upward that catches hers. This evening is now a roommate socialization victory, and now she has the entire rest of the night to play for bonus points.

"Things. I dunno." He shifts in his seat and raises his eyes all the way back up to her hands. "You have cool shit. It's nice. And you sew."

"Dig our young KJ getting smooth with the ladies," Heyoka smirks, once she's fairly sure he's done.

"Are you, though?" he asks her hands. "I mean, I know you're like. Not a dude. But are you a lady. Is what I mean."

"Duh, asshole." She wads up the gray paper snake into a dripping ball and throws it right in his face. "I'm a fucking delicate flower." She is only half joking.

"I didn't mean to be, uh." He says. "Nosy. It doesn't bother me. I mean I don't get it, but. You know. It's cool."

"It's too bad you're cis," she says, moving the topic to slightly less awkward waters. "You would make an awesome chick."

Ten bonus points. He is blushing. It's easy to tell when someone that pale is embarrassed. Heyoka knows already he is going to be a cool roommate, but taking androgyny as a compliment and getting flustered? That is pretty adorable.

"Sorry." He says. "You should have gotten the, uh. Genetics."

"Dear heart. I was put on this Earth to headfuck the binary. If I looked like you I'd have to whip out Junior to scare the frat boys away." Heyoka makes her coolest face. This thing that used to hurt has become her mission in life. There's no way to explain this without going into the Lecture, and she hates the Lecture. But she thinks he kind of gets it anyway. He's good at getting things she doesn't say, sometimes.

"Doesn't it bug you, though," he asks after a long minute. "Not... what is it. Passing."

"Shit..." Heyoka says, sighs, sits back. "Well yeah. Sometimes. I mean, I've had therapy up the ass. And I'm not always in girl mode either. But everyone wants what they can't have, right?" And she figures it can stay there for now. For a little while. Eventually everyone wants the story, but she thinks he'll be cool about it. The way she's being cool about... pretty much everything about him.

"I guess." He tells her hands. "You've got a chipped nail."

"Motherfuck," the refined lady grumbles. "I just fucking painted that shit."

Their food comes. Neither speaks much while they eat. It is, at their stage of involvement, simply too much work. He picks at his chicken fingers (with no cheese, as promised) and she lays into her sandwich with piranha table manners.

 

__  
**4\. Dinner and underpants**   


 

"I'm rubbing off on you," Kano says, and they play eye-tag again over the last bits of their meal. He's just a second too fast this time, but there will always be another chance.

"Say what now?" Heyoka finishes the last of the coffee. She is going to be wired as hell tonight. The food was great, but the coffee.... well, shit. She must admit it's great. Grudgingly.

"You curse way more than you used to." he adds. "Like, a lot more."

"And you're wearing Hello Kitty underwear." Heyoka reminds him. She will be doing this a lot in their friendship. It's never going to get old. This comfortable silence, too, she thinks she could just about get used to that.

 

__  
**5\. Intimacy, or what passes for it when you are crazy**   


 

"Listen," they both finally say at the exact same time the guitarist finishes a number. This is so trite and humiliating that they both stop short and just admire the way the empty air itself seems to be wincing.

"You go first," he says, just as she says the same thing.

"Oh fuck," he goes on, "I'm sorry about last night."

"I know. You have nothing to apologize for." She would give him the airy casual tone but he would take it wrong, so she skips that and goes straight for somber, and this seems to work.

"I didn't know I did that," he goes on, almost cutting her off. "Sleepwalking."

And Heyoka just laughs it off. Because seeing him get embarrassed and fumbly is one of those things she lives for just lately. And she isn't really sure why.

Then the guitar guy starts to sing and it is horrible. The microphone sounds the way her new roommate's face still looks.

"We have to get out of here right now," Kano says, and bam, there it is, eye contact for a split second. Twice in a single day. Heyoka does a private victory dance but outwardly pretends to be startled by the performer's abject failure at carrying a tune. It might be American Pie he's singing. It's just... bad.

"Could not agree more," she says, and grabs her messenger bag with a bit more force than necessary, just for the theatrics. They engage in a curious slow-motion race for the register by the door with the half-soggy dinner check, and Stephanie rings them up without a word.

 

**  
_6\. Departing Etiquette_   
**

 

He has a couple scrunched-up fives in his coat pocket, and no idea where it came from. He pays and leaves a great tip. He didn't see Stephanie gawping his scars and bruises and even the terminally tactless have to pay rent.

They walk back to the apartment in November chill, crunching leaves and listening to the night noises. In this part of town, it's 30% sirens, 60% industrial, 10% drunken fucker on the street corner. No one bothers them.

She lets them both in with her keys, and she knows he will not leave the place again for another month, or at least until they have another argument about the possibility of him growing into her couch like some kind of mutant furniture hybrid. This is not so good, psychologically speaking. You see this shit on the daytime talk shows and she has no interest in being anyone's mother.

But they're working on it. And that's cool.

She's also pretty sure that tomorrow he's going to wake up in her bed again, sprawled across her feet like a cat, and he will get all horrified and refuse to talk about it, but secretly neither one of them is going to mind all that much. And that's cool too.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: Cis=cisgendered. AKA not trans.
> 
> This work involves characters from [Kagerou](http://www.kagerou.org), which is my 900+ page monstrosity of a comic, and don't I just feel weird as hell promoting it here, haha.
> 
> Quick character summaries: Heyoka is a very tall, very intense genderqueer domestic god/dess who has recently been in a mental hospital for depression. S/he (pronoun varies from story to story) has just taken in another former patient from the same institution as a roommate.
> 
> This story takes place in the chronology juuust about a week after Kano escapes the hospital, follows her home, and shows up at her door asking to use the shower. And then never leaves.


End file.
